Hamilton quits CCA over Coalition’s “unconscionable” push to coal

The Turnbull government’s recent pitch for new, “clean” coal-fired power generation has been slammed by Australian ethics professor Clive Hamilton, in a letter announcing his immediate resignation from the Climate Change Authority, over what he descries as the Coalition’s “perverse” and “deeply dishonest” approach to climate and energy policy.

The letter, addressed to federal energy and environment minister Josh Frydneberg, says the Turnbull government’s renewed interest “in supporting, and even subsidising, the construction of a number of new coal-fired power plants” could only mean it had “abandoned all pretence of taking climate change seriously.”

Hamilton, right, with fellow CCA member climate scientist David Karoly

And for the Coalition to take this stance after learning that 2016 was the hottest year on record globally was “perverse, to say the least,” Hamilton added.

“No government remotely concerned about the impacts of a warming globe on the health, lives and wellbeing of Australians could even consider such a path,” the letter continues.

“You and the Prime Minister are in effect saying to the world that Australia’s share of the burden of limiting warming to 2°C must now be carried by other countries, including poor ones. That is unconscionable.”

Hamilton, like others before him, also points out that building new coal-fired power generation of any sort would make the Turnbull government’s “already weak” 2030 emissions reduction target “unattainable.”

“No government that describes the dirtiest for of electricity using the deeply dishonest term ‘clean coal’, invented by a PR company for the coal industry, can be believed when it says it wants to reduce Australia’s emissions,” the letter says.

In comments at the time, Hamilton criticised the CCA for shaping its report to suit the political environment, rather than basing it on the best available scientific and economic evidence.

“When the CCA was established it was made very clear in the legislation that it is independent,” he said. “We don’t believe that it’s the role of the authority to thread a political needle, to try to create something, craft a report that will suit the particularities of the cross-bench of the current parliament.

“Our report is based very firmly on the science,” he added. “Moreover, it is based directly on the recommendations of the climate change authority itself in the very first report of this review, which came out a year ago, a year before there was a change-over in the membership of the CCA.”

“It’s perverse that the government hasn’t already shut down the agency, seeing as it obviously is doing nothing to give us milder weather,” Blair writes. “The hottest summer happened on your watch, Clive.”

12 Comments

Farmer Dave 3 years ago

That last quote from Tim Blair is totally scary – he obviously has not a clue about the dynamics of the earth/atmosphere/oceans system, nor about the cumulative effects of adding greenhouse gases to our atmosphere and then the cumulative heat retention that is occurring, and will continue to occur, even if we stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases. Simply no clue. Why, oh why are so many people so ignorant of physics?

“It’s perverse that the government hasn’t already shut down the agency, seeing as it obviously is doing nothing to give us milder weather,” Blair writes. “The hottest summer happened on your watch, Clive.”

… is, I think, a taunt that is meant simply to enrage. No doubt it was expressed with a vindictive gloat. Nobody could possibly be that stupid … could they?

stalga 3 years ago

I notice Sophie didn’t call Blair a journalist.

Ray Miller 3 years ago

How many ministers does it take to break their oath of office before action is taken against them?

MaxG 3 years ago

Nobody cares… hardly anyone with a brain listens to their nonsense… except the stupid ones, who can’t think for themselves.

MaxG 3 years ago

Someone with an ethical mind quits… I agree — in this world — a non event… as sad as this is.

Radbug 3 years ago

Nanotechnology-based catalysis has made many avenues of methanol generation available today that make the old syngas method quite obsolete. Using methanol in Direct Methanol Alkaline Fuel Cells is almost here and even venting the resultant CO2 results in a 70% fall in carbon emissions relative to USC. And this doesn’t include co-generation. USC is dead man walking. I don’t blame the market for running away from this technology.

Radbug 3 years ago

Nanotechnology-based catalysis has made many avenues of methanol generation available today that make the old syngas method quite obsolete. Using methanol in Direct Methanol Alkaline Fuel Cells is almost here and even venting the resultant CO2 results in a 70% fall in carbon emissions relative to USC. And this doesn’t include co-generation. USC is dead man walking. I don’t blame the market for running away from this technology.

Steve Fuller 3 years ago

Really? Surely not.

Chris Sanderson 3 years ago

Clive’s resignation from the Climate Change Authority is sad but not surprising. Clive is also a professor of Ethics and great writer on climate change. His book ‘Requiem for a Species – How We Resists the Truth About Climate Change’ (2010), is probably only matched by David Spratt’s & Philip Sutton’s book ‘Climate Code Red – The Case for Emergency Action’ (2008). Both are probably the most widely read Australian works on climate change and as true today as when they were written.

I am sickened as I watch the lies and stupidity continually being expressed publicly by ministers in the LNP in Parliament today and the absence of any rational behaviour regarding climate change.

Why do we continually elect such people? I am as terrified as Americans are by Trump, to see how this country continues to degenerate through conservative leadership failure, that started with Howard.

My grandfather (who was knighted for his services to Menzies’ Australia) would turn over in his proverbial if he could see what the leadership of his party has become today……./Chris